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Alexander Vantournhout’s “Red Haired Men” is among the performances at this year’s Talent Lab festival of performing arts.Photo: Bart Grietens 

TalentLab#19 is primarily a birthplace for artistic creation. An international jury has selected 5 project leaders from dozens of submissions, allowing drama, opera and dance creatives to develop a project under the tutelage of some very prestigious mentors including writer and performer Chris Thorpe from Manchester and UK-based choreographer Hofesh Shechter. At the end of the festival, they get to present a 20-minute model of their original production to an audience.

Thorpe is the mentor to Paris-based Frieda Gerson’s multidisciplinary “Parasite” project, which combines circus, physical theatre and scientific research to explore mind control and the existence of free will. Shechter takes on Israeli-born dancer Yotam Peled, whose “ALPHA” is a fictional dance-theatre piece reflecting on gender roles in relation to power structures in modern society.

The festival also includes a performance by Thorpe, who brings his one-man show “Status”, which explores the idea of nationality, to the Théâtre des Capucins on Wednesday 5 June at 6:30pm. Other performances as part of the festival include the opera “I C O N” at the Grand Théâtre on Tuesday 4 June and dance performance “Red Haired Men” by Belgian artist Alexander Vantournhout at the Grand Théâtre on 6 June.

TalentLab#19 is on from 29 May to 9 June. Check out the full programme here.